“Where are the whole grains? Where are the fruits and vegetables?” laments dietitian Hope Warshaw, author of “Eat Out, Eat Right.” “You're sort of turning the food pyramid on its head.”

The research on kids' consumption in restaurants is so damning — the meals have twice as many calories as the ones at home, for example — that first lady Michelle Obama, speaking to the National Restaurant Association in September as a part of her “Let's Move” campaign to end childhood obesity, urged restaurants to cut calories, fat and sugar in kids' meals.

The good news: Some restaurants have been paying attention to such pleas and are offering more nutritious options for the younger-than-12 set.

In March, the Egg & I, a breakfast and lunch eatery with five San Antonio locations, became the first national chain restaurant here with a kids' menu recognized by the ¡Por Vida! healthy menu initiative.

For children's menus to be ¡Por Vida!-approved, they must include one or more servings of fruit, one or more servings of vegetables, a variety of nonfried entrées and a variety of beverages not sweetened by sugar.

The Egg & I's “Smarter Choices” kids' menu has four items, including grilled chicken strips served with fat-free ranch dressing and a ham-and-cheese omelet made with egg whites and served with multi-grain toast. Each item comes with a side of fruit or small salad.

Pico de Gallo, a Mexican restaurant west of downtown, was the first to collaborate with the Healthy Restaurants Coalition in 2009 to come up with nutritious items for kids.

Want more options? In its April issue, Parents magazine named the top 10 kid-friendly restaurant chains offering nutritious foods. Topping the list is Jason's Deli, which offers organic produce and whole-grain bread but no high-fructose corn syrup or artificial colors in its food.

Also on the list: Red Lobster, which offers seafood dishes with fewer than 350 calories and 12 grams of fat, and Red Robin, which began offering carrots, mandarin oranges and apple slices as sides last year (see the full list at parents.com).

Because offerings for kids so often are filled with fatty, salty, high-calorie fare, parents must be creative, Warshaw says.

She recommends ditching unhealthy kids' menus altogether and ordering off the regular menu, which exposes kids' palates to different types of food beyond chicken nuggets.

And try eating family style by sharing several dishes. Does everyone need a basket of fries, or can the family split a large order?

“Every restaurant meal and every meal at home is an opportunity to role model, to teach healthy eating habits,” Warshaw says. “You're doing that from choosing what restaurants you go to, to how you approach a menu, what you order off a menu, how much you eat of the food that is delivered, whether you ask for take-home containers, what beverage you order. We're always teaching.”